In certain types of delicate surgical operations, it has been customary to use as a surgical blade a piece of an ordinary carbon steel razor blade of the so-called "safety razor" type. Suitable tools are provided to break off from the blade a shard of desired size, which is then placed into a blade holder. Surgical blades thus made have provided acceptable results in operations such as eye surgery because of the sharpness of the blade and the thinness of the stock from which the blade is formed. The blade is, of course, discarded after a single use.
However, the forming of a blade in this manner and the use thereof has a number of disadvantages. Not every portion of a razor blade edge is suitable for this purpose and the portion to be used must be selected very carefully. The blade shard must be sterilized prior to use, and handled to assemble into the holder after use, which can cause damage to the cutting edge. For example, the sterile blade can be contaminated and dulled by contact with a rubber glove.
Also, the cutting edge on such a shard is not perfectly straight but has a slight curvature resulting from the bending to cause fracture.
In recent years it has become difficult for surgeons to obtain razor blades suitable for this use because of the shift from carbon steel blades to stainless steel blades. Although a piece of a carbon steel blade of proper size can be readily broken off by a suitable tool with a simple bending motion because of the brittleness of the blade, the material of which the stainless steel blades is formed is not as brittle, and hence such blades do not break cleanly, but break with a severe curve imparted to the broken edge. Hence the separation of a piece of desired size from such a blade is sufficiently difficult to be an impractical method of forming a surgical blade with an uncurved cutting tip.